Category: Daily Life in Cambodia

Just the skeleton…

This is a typical house in a Cambodian city, what is called a shophouse. It’s one room wide and this one has four floors. The lot it is on would be about 15 feet by 50 feet. In many countries the ideal house is on a good-sized piece of land away from the city center. Just the opposite in Phnom Penh. A house like this one will do just fine, thank you, the fulfillment of a dream.

Flat Tire

On the way back from a 6:15 AM mass across town, the motorcycle taxi I was riding had a flat tire. We were right in front of this “gas station” so my driver asked the guy to fix the flat but he said he was too busy doing whatever he’s doing above.
He did fill the flat rear tire with air to see if the leak could be located, but that didn’t help and my driver went down the street and found another motorcycle taxi to take me the rest of the way home while he searched for a place to repair the tire.

Windows Haiku

You know those error messages that pop up too frequently in Windows, the ones like 404 (Page not found)? Well, now there is an alternative if you would like to be informed with a little more poetry. Take this one for example:

Three things are certain
Death, taxes, and lost data.
Guess which occurred.

The young leading the blind

This is a not-uncommon sight in Cambodia, a young boy leading a blind man, his father. The government gives almost no meaningful aid to people with disabilities so blind people often use music to generate some income, and their young children, sometimes just five or six years old, lead the father through the city streets and collect donations.

What’s their story?

There are always so many stories around me in Cambodia, stories that I will never hear. I see a family(?) like this sitting on the street with all kinds of carved wooden objects which are very popular in Cambodian culture. Did they make them? Are they traditional craftsmen and women? Or are they just uneducated people who sit all day with the objects made by others and just get paid a commission? Where are they from? Is this a craft from another province? How much money do they make? Do they make a living at this?